MARS
This royal throne of
kings, this sceptered isle.
This earth of majesty,
this seat of Mars.
O shield-bearers of Hellas, embattled kings and
warring nations, which of you has worshipped the god Mars better than the House
of Thebes? Which of you has known the strife so pitilessly visited upon this
lineage, so relentlessly persistent from the time of Jo's flight into Asia, right through the reign of her great grandson Kadmos and his issue? Brother to
Europa, who suffered the harassments of Zeus, the young Kadmos wandered the
ancient world until he came to a sanctuary where he sought to win his destiny
through sacrifice to Athene. To fulfil this desire, he learnt that he must
bring water from a spring jealously guarded by a dragon-child of Ares, the
Greek name for the god Mars. He slew the dragon, and seizing its teeth out of
the great gaping mouth, he scattered them broadcast like seeds, which sprang up
after one season as a host of armed men called Spartoi ("the Scattered").
With these dauntless warriors at his command, Kadmos founded the fabled city of
Thebes and established a great centre for the worship of Ares. Smiling
benevolently upon these achievements, Zeus crowned his success by giving to him
in marriage the divinely born Harmonia, daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. But
little of the quality associated with her name would prevail in the line she
and her husband were destined to further. Their children were mostly daughters,
including the lamentable Agave, who married one of the Spartoi and mothered the
arrogant Pentheus, whom she would one day tear to pieces whilst in the throes
of a dionysiac ecstasy. Some of her sisters were driven mad or their spouses
fearfully murdered, whilst her brother died prematurely, to be followed to the
grave quickly by his son. Nor was this the end to the woes which plagued this
lineage of Ares worshippers. Soon to follow was the tragedy of Oedipus and the
tyranny of Kreon, which resulted in the ruthless and unjust deaths of
Polyneikes, Etiokles and Antigone, who spent her last agonizing hours encased
in stone.
Strife and pestilence follow like a plague in
the wake of Ares, and yet are accompanied by creation and sacrifice. To the
ancient Assyrians he was Nergal, god of death and warfare, whom they nonetheless
called the Great Hero. The Romans named him Mars and placed him on the highest
pedestal of worship as the source of their martial energy, ensuring the
continued expansion of their empire. By whatever names he has been known
throughout the Indo-European world, he has been depicted as an armed hero
bearing a sword, a whip, a spear or an arrow. His attributes typify that which
is positive, masculine, active, passionate and courageous. He is both feared
and praised as an ideal, the source of death and creation alike. As Mars he is
the offspring of Jupiter; as Ares, the son of Zeus and Hera. The Greeks
worshipped him as the god of war and strife but his name takes its origin from
the root αρ, which is also to be found in 'αρετή,
indicating the first notion of goodness – that of manhood and bravery in war.
This paradoxical
mixture of elements reached a
pinnacle of expression amongst the Romans, who began their old calendar with
the month dedicated to Mars (March) and the rebirth of life-energy. They celebrated
new life even as they made offerings to Mars for success in killing and
conquest on the eve of going off to war. A portion of the spoils was dedicated
to him and his most famous temple was known as Mars Ultor, Mars the Avenger.
The Campus Martius (Field of Mars) was the open space outside the gates of the
ancient city of Rome where men assembled under arms and practised military
skills. Sacred war dances were also performed there each spring by the priests
of Mars. What had once been an agricultural deity associated with spring and
regeneration became increasingly the champion of the battleground. The Romans
had gradually turned from farming to war and they brought with them their God
of the Borderlands lying between the farmsteads and the wilds. Now the "borderland"
over which he reigned had come to be an ever-expanding perimeter of a vast
empire.
Though powerful,
the Roman Empire was not the
greatest the world has ever known. Daniel Webster wrote of "a power which
has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and
military posts, whose morning drumbeat, following the sun, and keeping company
with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of
the martial airs of England". Whilst not overtly worshipping Mars, the
builders of such dominions certainly mastered his arts and placed the warring
soldier uppermost as an ideal of courage and manhood. Possessing "an eye
like Mars, to threaten and command", the hero has been envisaged time and
again, leading to an almost irresistible glorification of war. The deeply
entrenched human instinct to glorify war is possibly rooted in an intuition
that the spirit of moral greatness alone conquers all partisan claims. Perhaps
it is even more fundamental and subliminal. It may be that the human race
shares a dim awareness of an ancient belief identifying blood with the first
bloodshed of primordial conception, an idea translated only secondarily to
refer to the bloodshed of war.
The
translation links the polar opposites of
creation and death and echoes the arcane conception that creation emerges only
through an original sacrifice, and that its product can be preserved only
through periodic sacrifice and recurrent war. Oddly enough, the twin-peaked
mountain on the planet Mars which bears the name Janus is an apt symbol of
inversion between the upper invisible world and the lower world of forms. The
intercommunication between them involves a titanic conflict between life and
death on the threshold of primordial order. It is the old notion that every
life demands a death and thus lays the basis for the unspoken assumptions
behind constant sacrifice and inescapable war. Of course, this involves an
inversion in consciousness analogous to the translation alluded to earlier, but
from the perspective of creation and death viewed as two sides of the same
coin, Mars may be considered in terms of the grim necessity of bloodshed in
Nature and the cosmos.
Astrologically,
Mars governs Aries and Scorpio,
the burgeoning and disintegration of strength. These zodiacal signs mark the
beginning and the end of each year. Aligned with birth, Mars, like Venus, is
seen as beneficent. Aligned with death, he is the evil counterpart of Venus,
the lord of the ecliptic, the borderland, the balancing line of adjustment
between the opposites. Ancient Egyptians referred to the planet Mars as the Star
of Death, and this is echoed in the broader Semitic reference to the Death
Spreader. The Pleiades are the celestial weapons of Mars in the ruthless
decimation of mankind, but they also aid him in its protection. This is vividly
portrayed in the Puranic tales of the Krittikas, who nursed Karttikeya (the
Hindu Mars) and clothed him in time and form.
The begetting of Karttikeya was made possible
through Lord Shiva and the creative power of Parvati, one aspect of Shiva's
consort and counterpart. Karttikeya is the "spurt of sperm", the leap
or descent of spirit, which is shed or split. He was received by Agni (the only
one of the gods capable of enduring contact with the burning seed), who took
the seed in his mouth and sought relief from its heat by cooling himself by a
lake where the Krittikas (the wives of the Saptarishis) were bathing. Agni made
of himself an accommodating blaze around which they could take warmth after their
bath and was thus able to pass the fiery semen to them through their opened
pores. Their husbands were not pleased with this and, abandoning them, left the
Krittikas to run to the peak of snowy Himavat to rid themselves of the burning
seed. It fell into Ganga, who rolled it up on a bank of arrow reeds, through
which it emerged as a beautiful boy. Thus Karttikeya was born of fire (Agni)
and water, fire around a pool of water into which the seed was symbolically
dropped. The seed falling in the centre signifies the beginning of cycles, the
commencement of objective existence suggested fundamentally in Karttikeya's
name, which comes from the root karta, meaning "separation of
existence" or "cutting off from the togetherness of the parent's
domain".
With the example of Karttikeya, the paradoxes
of Mars increase, for Shiva's offspring is a celibate and yet the
personification of generation and the springs of life. He is a Kumara who
preferred the curse of incarnation rather than witness the misery of the shadows,
but is said to have been precipitated into matter in order to halt the
activities of the demon serpent Taraka. By killing him, Karttikeya became the
prototype of the dragon-slayers, a mystery to do with the fact that, as chief
of the Rudras (the mysterious beings holding the sacred fires, the most arcane
potencies of Nature), he also signifies the central life force ruling over and
controlling all lesser life forces operating in Nature and within the vestures
of human souls. He is also closely connected to Kama-deva or Eros, the primeval
desire which is the germ of mind, connecting non-entity with entity, and which
is the energy behind downward desires. If Mercury, Venus and Mars constitute
the sacred triangle of involution, then Mars is its sharp angle, pointing
downward, dipping most deeply into the waters of manifestation, marshalling the
mental troops of the most volatile and irrational elements in subtle Nature in
the service of monadic evolution.
Orbiting in the outermost region of the inner
solar system, Mars flanks the earth on its left, so to speak, while Venus
revolves on its right. The red planet keeps in its orbit about 2.17
astronomical units from the sun, limiting the inside extension of the asteroid
belt which separates the inner from the outer solar system. The eccentricity of
the orbit of Mars is almost five times that of the earth, and the planet
completes its circuit in twice the time it takes our globe to make its rotation
(pradakshina) around the solar orb. But because Mars is one and a half
times further away from the sun than is the earth, its day is similar in length
to our own. The tilt of its axis is also similar to the earth's, and observers
of the planet thought for a long time that its seasons could be traced in
shifting patterns of vegetation in its northern and southern hemispheres. It is
recognized now that these are periodic changes of the bright and dark regions
of the planet's soil, brought about by many small dust storms and an annual
major wind storm obscuring and shifting about a large part of the surface. This
great storm starts when Mars is close to its perihelion, beginning at about the
same place in its southern hemisphere and spreading up around the globe. The
surface temperature, which exceeds freezing only on the warmest days, now
increases under the influence of an atmosphere which can heat up as much as
fifty degrees Kelvin (one hundred and twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit), due to
absorption of solar radiation by the dust. Normally, however, the atmosphere is
cold, dry and very thin, with clouds and ice only at the poles. The surface of
Mars in general is also cold and dry, its water frozen at the poles, leaving
vast arid plains to the north and south of them carved with enormous dry
riverbeds.
Mars is circled by two satellites, Phobos and
Deimos (Fear and Panic), whose existence was predicted by Johann Kepler in 1610
on the basis of his mathematical calculations concerning the progression of the
solar system. They revolve around a planet which is half the size of the earth
and has a reddish surface owing to oxidized iron minerals marked by lines
tracing the history of vertical plate movements. A further vertical distinction
can be found in a comparison of the northern hemisphere, composed mostly of
smooth lava flood planes, and the mountainous southern hemisphere with its many
craters. The source of this distinction is not known to modern scientists, who
now tend to leave their hypotheses about the unknown a little more open-ended
than earlier observers who developed elaborate theories about the canals on
Mars which they believed were built in order to drain polar waters, but which
turned out to be optical illusions. One feature, however, about which no one
harbours any doubts is a remarkable mountain three times higher than Mount Everest
and seven hundred kilometers wide at its base. It is the largest mountain
known in the solar system and, together with others on Mars, comprises a mass
so heavy that a crust much thicker than that of the earth is necessary to
support it.
The gigantic planet Jupiter, which orbits
outside the asteroid belt, exerts an influence on its neighbours, producing
gradual changes in the earth's orbit and in the inclination and orientation of
its axis. Being closer than the earth to Jupiter, Mars experiences these
effects even more, the periodic changes in its axis and in the shape of its
orbit being far greater than those of our planet. From a mystical perspective,
this relates to the idea that humanity cannot come under the direct influence of
the regal and esoteric Jupiter until it has conquered greed, anger and craving.
Meanwhile, Jupiter exerts a subtle influence through the mediation of Mars. It
will act more directly to bring to light hidden aspects of science, philosophy
and religion and the latent mental and psychic powers in man only in the
future. It is intriguing to ponder how much Jupiter's physical effect upon Mars
corresponds to this and has to do with its vertical plate movements and the
differences noticeable between its northern and southern hemispheres. It is
possible that its influence is partially responsible for the periods
experienced every few million years by Mars when the climate is thirty degrees
Kelvin (eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it is now and some of the polar
ice and permafrost melts. Evidence of these periodic melts lies in the
present-day dry riverbeds on the planet's surface which are up to thirty
kilometers wide and hundreds of kilometers long and make the Amazon seem a
paltry stream by comparison. In the belief that it was indeed water that carved
out these channels, modern scientists call Mars, along with the earth, a water
planet, one which, in the past, is thought to have had a "friendly"
climate. It is held that such a climate could have once supported vegetation
capable of releasing oxygen into the atmosphere through photosynthesis, thereby
encouraging the development of more complex life forms.
Such are the generous speculations of modern
science. But, one may pause to ask, on what basis do we think that water or
other elements held to be the criteria for life on earth must also be the exact
criteria for life elsewhere in the solar system? If one examines this question
open-mindedly, one may come to discern the irony in such a geocentric perspective,
especially after recalling how we have congratulated ourselves for centuries on
having transcended the shrivelled geocentric theories of the Dark Ages. Instead
of adopting a thoroughly heliocentric view of the solar system, however, we
persist in applying geocentric criteria when addressing larger questions about
the presence of life outside the earth. From a truly heliocentric perspective
things may look entirely different, with radically different criteria arising.
The very notions held regarding the nature of solids, liquids and gases may be
altered. As an imaginative scientist of the last century suggested, "On
Mercury, water would rank as one of the condensible gases; on Mars, as a
fusible solid." One may take this further and examine it from a metaphysical
heliocentric point of view, where the true Spiritual Sun is the invisible
centre around which the cosmic hierarchies connected with Buddhi, Manas
and the other principles revolve like planets. Then one might ask, "Is
there life on Buddhi, life on Manas, etc.?" One might also wonder what
place earth has in this design since man, the microcosm of the whole cosmos,
finds his home there.
Behold Migmar, as in his crimson
veils his "Eye" sweeps over slumbering Earth. Behold the fiery aura
of the "Hand" of Lhagpa extended in protecting love over the heads of
his ascetics. Both are now servants to Nyima, left in his absence silent
watchers in the night.
The Voice of the Silence
Like silent watchers, all three planets –
Mercury, Venus and Mars – orbit around the inner solar system on either side of
the earth. Mercury and Venus relate symbolically to the intuitive immortal
soul, whilst Mars represents forces propelling it into an incarnated and
limited condition, the karta or "cutting off from the oneness of
the parent's domain". Proclus put it succinctly when he wrote that Mars
"is the source of division and motion, separating the contrarieties of the
universe which he also perpetually excites, and immutably preserves, in order
that the world may be perfect and filled with forms of every kind". He is
not the ultimate source of motion but the focus, as it were, through which the
Divine Breath throbs in the manifest world. The seed of Karttikeya enters
through the doorway of the Pleiades into the galactic system and a sevenfold
parthenogenesis takes place, starting a process of division which multiplies
and occurs incessantly throughout the vast cycle over which he broods. This
requires the "disintegrating into the modification of two opposites for
production", and it necessarily entails death as well as creation,
sacrifice as well as growth and strength.
Mars carries forth the Fohatic, creative energy
that lies at the very root of manifestation, and in ruling Aries and Scorpio,
it marshals this primordial force which on the human level is good or evil
depending on the motivation, use and level of concern for the Agathon,
Universal Good. Aries signifies the serpentine fire which compels the ego to
evolve. This is conveyed by the planetary influence of Mars and relates to the
centrifugal state wherein the soul becomes a more individuated centre of force.
The culmination of the combative phase in human evolution is reached in
Scorpio, the watery, negative house of the red planet. Up to this point, the
creative force had been acting externally, but now it becomes indrawn to form a
mighty reservoir of energy needed in the latter half of the soul's pilgrimage.
This brings the enlightened individual to the threshold of the great final
battle where avidya and trishna (ignorance and thirst for
sensation) must be slain for the gaining of conscious immortality. This final
battle involves the timely self-limitation of Saturnian justice and the
bond-breaking, centripetal influence of Uranus.
Aries marks the descent of spirit into matter,
making of man a "living soul". This is an act of vidya
(gnosis) converting to avidya (nescience), symbolized in the ram of
sacrifice. Aries begins the year in the sense that it begins the first division
of the twelve "hours" through which the soul must pass in the
underworld. According to the Egyptian Book of Am Tuat, the journey
through the dangerous realm of the watery dragon must be made before one rises
up into that of Horus like an upsurge of water from a fountain. This journey is
made time after time, through sleep and death, but also through incarnation in
the world. Small cycles within vast cycles, the entire process encompasses a
long struggle as the human soul strives to grow towards the light. The roots of
the tree of this process of evolution are found in Aries and Scorpio. They are
the two poles of the influence of Mars. But the sap rising from these roots
nurtures ignorance and craving as well as the heroic strength needed to slay
them. The weapons of the Lord of the Battlefield of Life will either result in
self-destruction or conquest of death, depending upon how they are perceived
and used.
The colour of Mars is red, crimson as blood
sacrifice or bloodshed on a battlefield. Water is the blood of the earth, the
element connecting it with the generative gods such as Adam-Jehovah,
Brahmā or Mars. Is there a corresponding relation between the planet Mars
and the earth on the basis of water? The earth has water in liquid form in
abundance, but that of Mars is frozen, locked up, to be released only every
several million years. Is there an arcane significance to this which could
provide a key to understanding larger cycles of generation taking place on our
globe? Is the force of the seminal principle operating in the solar system
focussed and released through Mars in impulsions expressed in the release of
its frozen waters? Do these impulsions have any bearing upon the climatic
changes on earth or the sudden disappearance of entire species, followed by the
development of new lines of life forms? And what part does the powerful
influence of Jupiter play in this scenario? The calculated periodic changes in
the inclination of the axis of Mars, brought about by the effect of Jupiter,
are ten times greater than the earth's. These inclinations alter the
relationship between Mars and the earth, subjecting the latter to different
exposures of the many faces of Mars.
In the Puranic myths, Karttikeya is depicted as
having six heads, one for each of his "mothers" (the seventh Krittika
remaining hidden). Mars turns these faces towards the earth in succession. Some
of them are smooth lava plains bearing the marks of ancient explosions now
quiescent, whilst others support gigantic weapon-like promontories whose
volcanic apertures seem to be aimed and ready to fire. Some faces are
pock-marked with craters and scarred with the wounds of bombardment and
erosion; some take on the intense rosy glow of blood seeping close to the
surface, promising excitement, fecundity and death. As the axis of Mars tilts,
it exposes different hemispheres, and with them the influences of creation and
fusion alternate with those of sacrifice and strife. Even the vertical plate
movements on the surface of Mars can be seen as representing shifts in the
emphasis and character of alternating expressions of the central life force.
Karttikeya was born of the sweat and semen of
Shiva and the earthly progenitors (the "mothers" who clothed him).
The sweat of Shiva, though potent beyond all comparison with embodied elements,
can be likened in its lower manifesting aspect to water or blood. In this
sense, Karttikeya's birth is echoed in the Mosaic utterance that "it takes
earth and water to create a human soul". Latter-day interpretations of the
symbolism associated with the gods of generative powers drag such ideas down to
the level of a perceived necessity involving the shedding of blood to gain
life, even to the point of mixing it with the soil of the earth in the belief
that such a mixture would engender new life and energy in the land. The water
or blood of which Karttikeya was engendered is to earthly water or blood what
the desire that first arose in It is to the craving of the senses. They are
related but not to be equated with one another. Born without the intervention
of woman, Karttikeya came into the world as Lohita the Red, the "First man".
Like Mars, he became a god of war and bloodshed only secondarily, the primary
idea of bloodshed associated with him having to do with an archetypal
conception on a plane of far subtler motion and division. The first notion of
goodness, associated with manhood and bravery in war expressed by the old
Greeks in the word 'αρετή, relates back to this
primordial conception rather than to the slaughter and strife represented by
its etymological namesake, Ares, god of the House of Thebes. The force of
desire operating in matter need not result in the inversions and repressions
responsible for the ignorance and bloodshed so rampant in the world. The
weapons of Mars are good or evil depending on who wields them. In like manner,
the influence of the planet Mars upon the earth can be good or evil. It is not
possible simply to wish away this potent force any more than one can wish the
red planet away.
In coming into being, Karttikeya washed up on
earth in the shara or kashi reeds used in ancient times as arrows
and spears. Like his weapons, he was a reed, a narthex reed through which the
flame of enlightenment descends. As such, he is the vesture of this flame which
passes through the seven sections or chakras of the reed, awakening each
centre as it touches it. In this way, the first man can be found in every human
being, who, like a reed-vesture containing chakra nodules, is a
miniature of the cosmos with its seven times seven dvipas. In man the manipura
chakra lying between the lumbar and the navel is the centre wherein the
fiery gastric juices of digestion and food processing lay the foundation for
the life force. This is the seat of Karttikeya or Mars, whose energy promotes
growth and differentiation within the human microcosm as in the greater cosmos.
But it is also the field of Mars whereon Fohat gathers his forces and begins to
march them through the higher chakras towards the Agni realm of creative
contemplation. Thus those who have been cut off through fascination with the
lower region of lunar forms are now indrawn into the primordial cosmic source
of all light, life and energy.
The cutting off marks the first sacrifice of
the central life force wherein the virgin Kumara, Karttikeya or Mars, marries
and governs the energies operating within the world of differentiated forms.
This enormous potency lends a seemingly inexhaustible energy to the lesser
vital forces bound up with the vestures used by the lower mind and the five
senses. As long as the body is alive, these seem to flourish and drive the
consciousness of the deluded individual in myriad directions, sparking and
exciting and separating it into endlessly changing forms. One can imagine the
plight of the slavish glutton who lets himself be dominated by desires clamouring
in the hollow pit of his stomach, convincing him that there is some secret
ingredient, some unique morsel, which will satisfy the craving armies of
elementals which have gained control over the communication network between the
inner ruler and the outer persona. Such a desperate condition necessitates
all-out warfare in order to depose the pretenders and place the conserved
creative power of Mars in a position of complete control by the immortal soul,
the Manasa. Now the cutting off must take place in reverse. But instead of
separating off from unity, the process involves cutting away from endlessly
multiplying diversity and fragmentation in consciousness. Only by disentangling
desire from the countless forms it can take can one purge it of selfishness and
render it a worthy weapon for altruistic contemplation upon Universal Good and
the supreme Godhead.
If this is true in relation to the individual,
so too this can pertain to circles of ascetics dedicated to self-study and
self-conquest in the service of humanity. Each seeker has to disentangle the
desires extraneous to the sacred goal of human solidarity and see them very
clearly for what they are. To permit these tangled skeins and objects of desire
to obtrude themselves into one's separative consciousness so that they become
mixed up with self-transcending motives and concerns is to weave an opaque
shroud around one's powers of perception. Such a laggard soul will be
unprepared for the decisive moment of choice when one crosses the borderland
marking off the wild deserts of endless discontent from the verdant Field of
Mars wherein the inward ascent is to take place. At this point, one needs to be
well equipped and firmly disciplined to do battle with the legions of darkness
and egotistic stagnation.
In sport, the finest athletes are those who are
wholly concentrated upon the highest imaginable skill, stamina and morale they
can bring to their endeavours. Each and every aspect of mind and body is
focussed upon the task at hand. Every selfish desire they have ever indulged is
now transmuted into a single-minded current of ideation focussed upon the
motionless target of spiritual archery. Materialists refer to this as the
"killer instinct", likening such a man to the tiger unwaveringly intent
upon its prey or the owl who swoops unerringly to catch up its hopelessly
fleeing meal. But this is not merely an irrational instinct. The positive power
of Mars released by the morally courageous ascetic requires the persistent and
patient training of the spiritual will. It involves the reinversion of the
centrifugal process of division and proliferation downward and outward so that
a kind of death of ego takes place to permit the birth of the regenerated and
purified self, ready to enlist in the Army of the Voice.
The procreative power of division and
possession can thus be transmuted into the energy of altruism and the bliss of
transcendence. But ceaseless sacrifice is needed to sustain the energy of
selfless creativity and spiritual self-abnegation. The renunciation of lesser
loves and longings, self-regarding hopes and goals, and the very sense of self
is required for the spiritual ascent. Mars enters the world in sacrificial
descent so that embodied forms of creation can unfold. Mars is thus born in
man, igniting the creative aspects of mind and body. But he is merely a blind
force, a weapon in the hands of an untutored child, unless his overlord's
sweeping eye is fully in charge over the armies rightfully belonging to him. If
men and women heroically struggle on the moral battlefield and take control
over the lesser vital forces within, Mars is spiritually reborn, in harmonious
relation with Venus and Mercury, with the wisdom of sacrificial love and the
light of noetic insight.
On the muddy, blood-soaked battlefields of this
globe, souls have often shown heights of moral courage far greater in magnitude
than the mundane cause for which they risked their lives. It is as if they have
been ignited and raised up to a level of love so purely motivated and perfectly
focussed that their personal delusions fell by the wayside and they were
fearlessly catapulted into the sacred tribe of selfless heroes. Some have died
such a glorious death, others have lived to descend once again into the hopes
and fears of worldly existence. But the spiritual warrior does not wait for the
external call to battle. He begins the work of honing mind and will, thus
preparing for accurate aim the concentrated energy of spiritual resolve. The
neophyte may die on an earthly battlefield or of pestilence or old age, but
none can run away from the real war, and its implacable demands of intelligent
sacrifice. The heroism of terrene battles may be intuitively seen as educative,
transcending the limits of the separate serf and the role-playing actors on the
stage. We sense the deeper battle awaiting and are aware that in the isolated
act of heroism we have glimpsed what lies latent in all souls. We have glimpsed
the radiant Mars within each person, rising up to the source and summit of wisdom,
compassion and oneness of being.
O Migmar, thy sweeping Eye of Wisdom
Mirrors the circled door of the Mysteries
By which the Divine Breath of Life
Descended from Heaven to earth.
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